Their anthems & ours. God Save the King v The Roast Beef of Old England
With the appointment of Charles as King the reappearance of God Save the King as the national anthem is a given.
There is a lot of history here. In the late eighteenth century there was an anthem war between Loyalists to the Crown and Jacobins who supported the French Revolution. This took place according to E P Thompson in the Making of the English Working Class in provincial theatres- places of entertainment and politics.
Loyalists sang God Save the King and radicals the more traditional anthem, the Roast Beef of Old England. Non meat eaters can relax here. The radicals were not eating beef. Thanks to what we call a cost of living crisis they couldn’t afford it. The basic diet was bread. The point was that there was a time when the poor could afford to eat beef.
The version sung two hundred years ago contained explicitly political lines:
“Scatter his enemies, And make them fall, Confound their politics, Frustrate their knavish tricks.”
Thompson reports an incident at a Sheffield Theatre in 1812. South Devon Officers ‘Church and King Bullies’ insisted on the singing of God Save the King. Thompson notes ‘the mobility in the gallery insisted on it not being sung’
Perhaps its time to reinstate the Roast Beef of Old England as the national anthem.
Well, replacing a (nominally) British national anthem with an explicitly English one would certainly give a boost to Scottish and Welsh independence movements!
Barwick Green, no words needed (though I recall Jack deManio interviewing someone who sang,
“Dan and Doris, Jack and Christine, Walter Gabriel, too:
There is lots of fun for them, and lots of fun for you!” ).
Who let the dogs out?